September 16, 1882

The Oxford Movement has not been forgotten. It was a gathering of people and ideas, in the Victorian era, which in effect moved the Anglican church closer to the Roman Catholic. Some of its leaders in fact wound up back in Catholicism. Not our subject today, though -- Edward Bouverie Pusey (August 22, 1800 to September 16, 1882). He did push for confession and monasticism as Anglican options. The Encyclopedia Britannica treats his life briefly, saying of our subject that he was an:

English Anglican theologian, scholar, and a leader of the Oxford movement, which sought to revive in Anglicanism the High Church ideals of the later 17th-century church.

In 1823 Pusey was elected to a fellowship at Oriel College, where he met the churchmen John Keble and John Henry Newman (later Cardinal Newman), with whom he subsequently shared leadership of the Oxford movement. After studying theology and Oriental languages in Germany, he was nominated Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford by the duke of Wellington.

Pusey’s association with the Oxford movement began in 1833. He contributed a tract on fasting to Tracts for the Times in 1834, and a year later he wrote for the series an extensive tract on baptism. The hostility of university authorities was aroused in 1843 by his sermon asserting the doctrine of the real presence in the Eucharist, and he was suspended from university preaching for two years. The ensuing notoriety substantially helped the sale of the tracts. Newman, who edited them, wrote of Pusey: “He at once gave us a position and a name.”

Pusey was known as a warmhearted, sincere, and humble man, whose activities included the building of St. Saviour’s Church, Leeds, at his own expense (1842–45) and service to the sick during the cholera epidemic of 1866. In 1845 he helped found in London the first Anglican sisterhood, which revived monastic life in the Anglican church. Conservative in his biblical criticism, he subscribed to the principle of revelation as interpreted by the historical authority of the church and opposed the use of philosophical systems in constructing a theology. His many books include The Doctrine of the Real Presence (1855) and The Real Presence (1857) as well as scholarly works, such as The Minor Prophets, with a Commentary (1860) and Daniel the Prophet (1864). ....

We find Edward Bouverie Pusey using a cat proverb as cited by Henry Parry Liddon, in his (1898) 4 volume,  Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey. To appreciate the context we should remember Bishop Colenso, who disputed with Pusey. Colenso asserted that miracles were not evidence since "educated Europe" discounted their credibility.

In a letter to fellow scholor at Oxford, John Keble, dated November 6, 1862,  Pusey considers the proper response to such arguments.

It is the old story, “who is to bell the cat?” Here, in Oxford, we
seem to be so familiar with our evils as to acquiesce in them, sleeping
in the snow, which is death. . . . And now Bp. Colenso is striving to
make a position in the Church for his unbelief. And then the Church
would be (God forbid) dead. I used to maintain and do maintain,
that the Church must bear with much, for fear of worse evils. But
she must not bear with this naked denial of our Lord the Atoner, and
of God the Holy Ghost Who spake by the Prophets. . . . I never felt
so desponding as I do now, not at people's attacks (these we must
expect), but at the acquiescence in them on the part of religious men.


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